Have you Googled yourself lately? If you have, you may be disappointed.
That’s because the old ways of showing up on Google (traditional SEO) are DEAD.
Ready for the good news?
You can absolutely ‘teach’ Google how to see you. Just like teaching a child.
That’s why we’ve partnered with Jason Barnard of Kalicube to teach you EXACTLY how to do that.
Next Wednesday, September 7th at 10:00am EST / 7:00am PST, we’ll be doing a LIVE Masterclass with Jason that focuses on two things:
Everything you need in your personal branding toolbox to make sure people perceive you the way you WANT to be perceived How and where to use those branding elements to make sure that GOOGLE sees you the same way.
Register to join this FREE masterclass.
Introducing Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Who Currently Resides in Paris
[00:00:00] Tonya Eberhart: Coughing on camera. We are live, and I’m coughing to death. First off, hello, Jason Barnard.
[00:00:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Hi, Tonya. How are you doing?
[00:00:13] Tonya Eberhart: Excellent, excellent. We’ve been so excited about having you on today to talk about how Google displays your brand. And this is what we’re going to talk about today, teach Google how to display your brand. We’re going to introduce ourselves a little bit better here in just a few moments, but I want anybody joining us now, hey, chime in through the comments and let us know where you’re coming from. And Jason, tell everybody where you are today.
[00:00:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Thank you. I’m in Paris. You can’t see it here, but I’m sitting in my daughter’s flat in Paris. She studies literature, which is why there are lots of books. I don’t read books very much. The speakers are mine, because I’m an ex-musician from years ago. I joined a band in Paris 35 years ago, 34 years ago and had a career as a punk folk musician playing double bass for 10 years, touring Europe, which was absolutely brilliant. So, Paris is my spiritual home and loving it here, eating great food. The weather was lovely up until about 10 minutes ago when it started raining.
Talking About Jason’s Life and Attitude of Being a Punk Folk Musician Before Becoming The Brand SERP Guy
[00:01:25] Tonya Eberhart: Ah. And did you say a punk folk?
[00:01:30] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yep.
[00:01:31] Tonya Eberhart: That’s hard to say first of all, but wow, what a niche.
[00:01:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, punk folk. If you think about The Pogues, who were a very famous folk punky group, we were, basically, it’s playing folk music with folk instruments with a punk attitude. And if you look up here, this wolf dog with a double bass is actually an illustration of me playing the double bass, pretending to be a wolf with that punk attitude. I’ve been a punk since I was quite small. And I think punk is all about your attitude and not the hairstyle. Luckily for me, now I think about it.
[00:02:08] Tonya Eberhart: I’ve been called a punk before by my brother and people like that. I don’t really know how kind that was.
[00:02:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, right, if you look at it from the point of view of punk in the English sense of the Sex Pistols or the Dead Kennedys, in fact, from California, punk is a great thing. It’s a great attitude. It’s being different. It’s being yourself and having the courage to go out there and actually do things the way you want to do them. And from my perspective at least, my life has been an entire sequence of thinking. Here’s my life story from punk in the countryside, through my groups, through the blue dog and yellow koala cartoons, up to Kalicube is doing what I feel is right, doing what I want to do, doing what I believe in.
[00:02:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And right now, it’s The Brand SERP Guy. It’s how to present your brand on Google. And I truly believe that what I’m doing is important and helpful to everybody. So, I’m incredibly, as you can see, enthusiastic.
Addressing the Absence of the Show’s Co-host and Greeting the Listeners From Around the World
[00:03:09] Tonya Eberhart: Oh, we call that very passionate around here. And Michael and I are exactly the same way. And I have to address something. You’ll notice, for those of you who know us, my other half is missing this morning. Unfortunately, he had a major event today, but we have some big news to drop at the end of this. So, you just hang tight guys. And we’re going to get right to the message here in just a moment.
[00:03:31] Tonya Eberhart: But I want to say hi to everybody from the Philippines to Amelia Island to I believe I saw Minnesota, Dubai. I see a lot of our clients on here today as well. So, welcome to all of you. And we are going to get started here in just one second, but hello and thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.
[00:03:55] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Brilliant. I even see Thierry is in France. One of them at 401, Thierry G said I’m in France. So, we even have a second French person here, which is delightful. So, I’m very much at home.
[00:04:09] Tonya Eberhart: There you go. There you go. And Bangalore, India, Tulsa, Oklahoma, hello, everybody. We’re so happy to have you. Okay. Well, let’s tarry no longer, okay? Let’s get this party started.
Telling How Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Came on the Podcast and How He Explains Things in a Lively and Interesting Way
[00:04:23] Tonya Eberhart: All right. So, what we’re going to talk about today, guys, is teach Google how to display your brand. And we brought along the best of the best, and I want to tell you how we met. We met when Jason was on our podcast. And we were just blown away at not only the knowledge that he has about this, but blown away at the connection that we had. We help people build personal brands. He helps Google see those personal brands the way you want Google to see them.
[00:04:56] Tonya Eberhart: And I love, of course, you’ve already fallen in love with the guy, right? I love his personality. I love how he can take these very complex, super boring things and make them lively and interesting and actionable.
[00:05:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. That’s actually because I think these boring topics are interesting.
[00:05:18] Tonya Eberhart: They truly are. They are the way you explain them.
[00:05:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): All right. Okay. Great. Yeah, no, I absolutely love what I do. And one of the things I would like to point out is that when I was on your podcast, what I love is the way you create the brands. It’s something I don’t do particularly well. But once you guys have created the brand, I can definitely explain and help people to make sure that Google displays that brand the way that you created it for them.
Presenting the Topic, Teaching Google How to Display Your Brand, and Its Importance in the Standpoint of Personal Branding
[00:05:44] Tonya Eberhart: Well, let’s get started. Let’s get started. Okay. So, I’m going to pull up a presentation, guys, just so you can walk through this with us. All right. So, again, we’re going to talk about teaching Google how to display your brand today. And why is this important? Well, Jason’s going to explain why it’s important here in just a couple of moments.
[00:06:07] Tonya Eberhart: But from our standpoint of personal branding, it’s important because 83% of coaches, consultants, other experts, just like you, guys, watching here today, they lose everything they work for and go back to that 9-5 grind in the first 7 years of their entrepreneurship, because either their brand wasn’t dialed in or their brand wasn’t dialed in and Google did not see them the way they wanted Google to see them. Okay. And as Jason taught us, 1 in 6 searches on Google is a brand name.
[00:06:44] Tonya Eberhart: And what we say here at Brand Face is you don’t just need people to know you exist. You need the right people to know why you exist. Michael and I talk about this all the time. And that means you’ve got to have a lot of things dialed in, starting with some things that we’re going to go through with you today. But before we get started on that, I want Jason to speak to this. And then we’re going to go into our introductions, give you a little bit of our background here, and then go straight into the presentation.
Google Wants to Understand Who You Are, What You Do, and Who Your Audience Is
[00:07:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Yeah. Just before I talk about this slide, from the slide before, I’d really like that you need the right people to know why you exist, because that’s exactly what Google needs as well. It needs to understand who are the right people, who are your audience, which subset of its users is your true audience, and why you exist, what can you serve to them, how can you help them. Because Google’s job is to get its users to the solution to their problem as efficiently as possible. So, it needs to understand who you can help, how you can help them, and that you are the best at what you do.
[00:07:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, for Google, it wants to understand who you are, what you do, and who your audience is. And it’s actively looking for your explanation. That seems a bit strange, but Google wants you to explain to it. It needs you to educate it. Because what it’s trying to do is understand who you are, what you do, and who your audience is and how it should present you to that audience.
[00:08:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And so, it wants you to give it your version of that, of your brand message, so that it can communicate it correctly. It’s not trying to represent you in any way you don’t want. The only reason it would do so is if you haven’t communicated to it properly, if you haven’t educated Google to who you are, what you do, and who your audience is.
A Background on Jason’s Speciality, Brand SERPs, and the Story of How He Came Into This Industry
[00:08:38] Tonya Eberhart: Love it. Okay. So before we dig in, we want to tell you guys a little bit about our background and go ahead, Jason. We’ll let our esteemed guest go first.
[00:08:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Thank you very much. I’m Jason Barnard, The Brand SERP Guy. I specialise in Brand SERPs. That’s search engine results page. So, it’s the search engine results page for your brand name or your personal name. And that’s a specialty that I think nobody else in the world has is that I come at it from a perspective of saying, if you want Google to present you in the way that you want, you need to educate it. And that Brand SERP is a representation of how it understands you. It’s your Google business card, if you like.
[00:09:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the story of why I started doing that is actually because of the blue dog and yellow koala behind me is that I was pitching to new clients, and I would walk out of the meeting thinking that’s a sale for me, brilliant. And a lot of them didn’t sign. And then one day somebody told me, you know what we did as soon as you walked out the room is we googled your name, Jason Barnard. And what came up is Jason Barnard is a blue dog. And they didn’t want to entrust their digital marketing strategy to a cartoon blue dog.
[00:09:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, I then set about making sure that Google understood that I was no longer a blue dog, that I was a digital marketer and make sure that it presented me and my brand message as a professional digital marketer and demonstrate my credibility within my industry. And I don’t have the exact figures, but I stopped having the problem of losing that conversion at the very last moment because of a bad Google business card.
Tonya Eberhart’s Journey Starting From the Radio Industry to Going Into the World of Personal Branding
[00:10:24] Tonya Eberhart: I love that story. My story is not too dissimilar. I started in the radio industry over 30 years ago. And the minute I got into the radio industry, I realised that I was just treated so poorly like every other media sales rep out there. You poor guys, I feel the pain. And when I walked into these people that were spending $5-10-20,000 a month in radio advertising and other marketing, they looked at me like I had three heads and were like I wasn’t supposed to be there.
[00:10:58] Tonya Eberhart: So, I realised very quickly if I wanted to be seen differently, I had to change the way I presented myself. I had to present myself as a true professional, as somebody who knew what they were talking about, who was there for the greater good of their business and had their best interests in mind. And when I learned how to do that, that changed the way I was seen. It changed everything for me.
[00:11:24] Tonya Eberhart: At the same time, I began to notice that people in my town that were treated like rock stars were business owners. And I thought what on earth is going on here? I learned that all of those business owners, who were really had the high profiles, they were the face and the voice of their own business. They were in their radio commercials, on their TV commercials, newspaper. Internet was not even around back then, guys. This was 1988. It was around, but it was probably a computer the size of this office here by around that timeframe. So, it wasn’t readily available for everybody.
Starting Brand Face Where They Help People Define, Develop, and Display Their Personal Brand
[00:12:03] Tonya Eberhart: But I then began to take people into the studio, help them craft their message, help them present themselves differently to their ideal customers. And many years later, that led to a stream of personal branding experiences, where I helped a lot of people define, develop, and display their personal brand, which is what Michael and I and Brand Face are known for today, the 3d freedom formula, define, develop, and display.
[00:12:32] Tonya Eberhart: And that brings us to where we are now with the Brand Face. We started that about 9 and a half years ago. And luckily, we happen to cross paths with the gentleman that you see before you today, and we are tickled to death about it. And so, that’s our story. And so, I’m going to move on from here, and we’ll get started on what we’re going to talk to you, guys, about today.
Identifying Your Ideal Customers; For Brand Face, They Are Coaches, Consultants, and Creators Who Want to Stand Out in Their Industry
[00:12:58] Tonya Eberhart: So, here’s how we’re going to break it up. We’re going to show you exactly what we create for every client who goes through our personal branding program. And Jason’s going to teach you how to handle that on Google, how to present that so Google sees it the right way, the way you want them to see it. So, we’re going to break it down and go through each piece.
[00:13:24] Tonya Eberhart: So, in our define, develop, display formula, the one of the first things we do is we help you hone in on your ideal customer. As we said in the beginning, you need the right people to know why you exist, right? So, you’ve got to know before you do anything who it is you’re talking to and what it is you need to say to attract that type of person into your business and your life.
[00:13:48] Tonya Eberhart: So, ideal customers, one of the first things that we look at. And then what I’m going to show you here as well is an example of how we define our ideal customer. So, all the examples you’re going to see today are actually Brand Face examples for our own company. So, I’m going to show you all the things we create for every client. I’m just going to show you our examples.
[00:14:09] Tonya Eberhart: So, our ideal customer would be coaches, consultants, and creators who want to stand out as a recognised authority in their industry so they can attract, convert, and charge more for their services while spending less on their marketing. Okay. That’s pretty dialed in. And so, now, Jason, if you’d be kind enough to tell us what do we do with that kind of ideal customer profile.
To Convert More Prospects to Clients, Your Brand SERP or Google Business Card Needs to Look Impressive
[00:14:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. I think it’s really important as well to, from my perspective from the SEO industry, the search engine optimisation industry, is a lot of the times people or companies don’t ask themselves that immediate question, who is my ideal customer. And it’s a huge mistake. And my first slide is all about your Google business card. And I think that looks absolutely brilliant as a slide. And I would like to publicly thank Lesli for helping me out because it didn’t look that good before. I just added the elements, and she did the design. And I’m deeply grateful.
[00:15:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But the point here is that once you have your ideal customer, and in my case, it was when I went to see these potential clients. I was in meetings with the boss of the company. They googled my name immediately as I left. And that Google business card ruined my business for years until I sorted it out.
[00:15:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And as you can see on the right now, it looks quite impressive. It’s got the songs there. So, the blue dog has come back with a vengeance. But the overall Brand SERP that is presented, the search engine results page for my name, Jason Barnard, shows me to be a digital marketer. It shows me to be a credible digital marketer because I publish in major journals, like Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land, because I published a book and the book shows up, because I have the videos.
[00:15:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And when you click on the videos tab at the top there, you see a lot of videos on major channels within the digital marketing industry, Yoast, who are the plugin for WordPress. So, as soon as somebody sees my Google business card, I become credible in their eyes as a digital marketer. And that helps me to convert more prospects into clients.
[00:16:20] Tonya Eberhart: So, ideal customer, you definitely have to have that dialed in, guys. And once you do, then you’ll know how to show up on Google to make sure you’re attracting that person. All right.
You need to design your Google business card. Don’t leave it up to Google.
jason barnard (the brand serp guy)
[00:16:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. I would go so far as to say, you need to design your Google business card. Don’t leave it up to Google. That’s like letting your mother choose your clothes when you go to the hip party at college. You need to choose your own clothes because you don’t want to look silly.
[00:16:50] Tonya Eberhart: You don’t want to look silly. Michael and I say that all the time to people. There are a lot of people out there who will say, well, your customers really decide your brand at the end of the day, right? They decide what you’re known for or how they feel about you. Well, it is true that they do decide whether or not they’re going to do business with you, but don’t leave the design, the creation, the building of your brand up to your customer. That’s not their job to do that. It’s your job to create how you want to be viewed. And yeah, don’t let your mom pick out your clothes. Okay.
[00:17:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But that’s brilliant is that so many of us allow our customers or Google or our mothers to decide how we are presented. And that’s a mistake. It’s up to us to decide.
Brand Messaging: Brand Identifier, the Most Comprehensive Personal Brand Building System, and Elevator Pitch
[00:17:37] Tonya Eberhart: Yes, we are rebels here today. Okay. So, the next thing that we help our clients create in the personal branding journey is brand messaging. And basically, that’s the language that you use to articulate, to explain who it is that you serve. Let’s take those five big questions that we always say. If any of you have followed us, you know these five questions. Sing along, okay.
[00:18:04] Tonya Eberhart: It is who do you serve, how do you serve them, what qualifies you to serve them, how does it make their life better, and what makes you different from everyone else also trying to serve that same customer. Okay. So, your brand messaging has to answer all of those big five questions.
[00:18:24] Tonya Eberhart: So, what you see on your screen here are just two pieces of our brand messaging. First is our brand identifier, the most comprehensive personal brand building system across the globe. The second one is we help as an elevator pitch. We help coaches, consultants, and creators define, develop, and display a stand-out personal brand so they can attract more, convert more, and charge more while spending less on their marketing, right? And so, again, that calls out who is the ideal customer, but it also says what we do for them and how it changes their lives, right?
Google Is a Child Who Wants to Learn; You Need to Educate It to Understand and Avoid Misrepresenting You
[00:18:56] Tonya Eberhart: And so, Jason, when we help somebody create that brand messaging that articulates those points, what do we do with it?
[00:19:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. A hundred percent. I wish I had a good brand message like that, but we’ll start working on it as of tomorrow. But you definitely, if you’ve spent that time and you’ve figured out exactly what it is you are saying to whom and you have that identifier and that brand message, you need to make sure that Google understands it. Once again, Google doesn’t want to misrepresent you. If it is misrepresenting you, it’s because it’s misunderstood. So, you need to educate it.
[00:19:32] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And if you look on the left hand side there, it’s supposed to be a little child robot with a scratchy board for learning, because Google has a robot and it’s big and it’s scary. And people are scared of this massive robot and Google’s power and the fact that Google is so big and that Google is this scary machine. It’s not. It’s a child. It wants to learn. And it’s looking to you to educate it.
Tips to Educate Google: Have a Consistent Brand Message, Repetition, and Start With Your Own Website Then Work Outwards
[00:20:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The way you educate is actually very, very simple. And as we go through, I’ll give you tips. Each of the slides from now on will have Google tips, but the basic tips are you need a consistent brand message across the web. So once you’ve defined your brand message with Brand Face with Tonya, you need to then repeat that across the web. Repetition is the friend of educating this child. And then you need or you always need to start with your own website and then work outwards.
[00:20:29] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So if you are not expressing who you are, what you do, and who your audience is, what your elevator pitch is, what your brand message is on your own website, then you are making a huge mistake because that’s the first place Google looks. Then what it does is look around the web to see if the rest of the web agrees with you. And then it’s your job to go around and make sure the rest of the web does agree with you, that that brand message is consistent around, as you said earlier on, Tonya, the globe. I like that, using the word globe instead of world or earth.
Confidence in That Understanding Is Key; It Is What’s Going to Drive Your Business and Your Brand Message
[00:20:59] Tonya Eberhart: There you go. I like that too. Okay. And I love the analogy of teaching Google like a child because it wants to learn.
[00:21:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, no, a hundred percent. Google is actually trying to build an understanding of the world, which is almost human. And what we are now trying to do from my perspective at Kalicube is say, how do we educate this child? And the child analogy is absolutely brilliant, because we are teaching it exactly like we would teach a child.
[00:21:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It’s one simple, clear explanation from the parent. And then the parent sends the child to see the grandmother, the sister, the history teacher, the baker for confirmation of that information. And by repetition of the information by authoritative trustworthy sources, the child will understand and be confident in that understanding.
[00:21:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I think the massive miss that most people hit is that they think once Google has understood, we’re good to go. But like a child, confidence is key. Understanding is relatively easy. Confidence in that understanding is what’s going to drive your business, drive your brand message through Google.
[00:22:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And always remember that when your audience are using Google, they’re looking at you through the lens of Google’s analysis of who you are, what you do, and who your audience is. So, your audience, in this case, needs to be shown by Google your brand message. And if Google’s to do that, once again, you need to educate it, treat it like a child. It needs your support. It needs your help.
The Need for a Single Description About Your Brand on Your Entity Home and on First, Second, and Third Party Websites
[00:22:31] Tonya Eberhart: I love that explanation. Okay. So, here’s a little bit more brand messaging about Brand Face. I won’t read all of this, of course, but this, as Jason suggests, we started by putting this on our website. It’s on many other places too, but this is just a little paragraph that goes a little bit more in depth about what we are all about and who we help and answering those five questions again, right? So, that is more repetition, like you said, Jason.
[00:22:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. You need that single description that you place on every single site. Then you start with your about page, and then you replicate it consistently on first, second, and third party websites. I call it an Entity Home, which sounds a little bit complicated. But the Entity Home is just the webpage about you as a personal brand or your company, if it’s a company you’re dealing with, that Google will look to for this clear, simple brand explanation, brand message.
[00:23:27] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then it will go from that Entity Home, which is the one in the middle, which is the webpage on your website. And it will check on all the other sites that are relevant to your industry, whether everybody else agrees with you.
An Explanation of First, Second, and Third Party Websites and the Power of Corroboration of Your Brand Message Among Them
[00:23:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And when I say first, second, and third party websites, you might not know what I mean. First party is anything you directly control. Second party is everything you semi-control, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, where you control a lot of the content but you do not control the site. And third party is things that you don’t control at all. And if a third party website repeats your brand message, that’s incredibly powerful corroboration for the child.
[00:24:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So in our child example, first party would be the parent, second party would be grandmother, third party would be history teacher. The history teacher is completely independent and totally authoritative about history. So if you can get the history teacher to repeat whatever it is the parent has said, the child is going to be much more confident. So, you want to look at it from that perspective is first party: explain, second party: corroborate a bit, third party: really nail that brand message home.
[00:24:37] Tonya Eberhart: Do you see why we love how he explains things? I love the family aspect of it. That’s perfect. Okay. Still on the vein of brand messaging. Because when you create brand messaging, that’s just all these ways that you tell people exactly who you are and who you serve, et cetera, et cetera.
Signature Soundbites, the Highlights or Summary of Your Brand, What You’re Known For, and Who You Help
[00:24:56] Tonya Eberhart: Okay. So, these are one of the things we help our clients create are called signature soundbites. Now, soundbites, that term came from my old media days. You hear the soundbite, the train derailed coming up at 6:00 PM, watch it, right? And so, that’s what’s called a soundbite. Well, it’s getting you to tune in for more, right?
[00:25:20] Tonya Eberhart: So, we call these highlights of your brand at a glance. And they’re just a series of bullet points that hone in. And if you see nothing but what’s on your screen right now about Brand Face, you’ll have the answers to all five of those questions. So, signature soundbites are just, again, another way to highlight or summarise what we’re known for and who we help. And what do you do with those?
[00:25:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. Before I move on to that, I’d like to find out that Joan from my team is watching, and I would really love it if we can work on our soundbites next week, if we can please, because we don’t have them and we definitely need them. So, for me, this is also an incredible learning experience.
Google Tips for Signature Soundbites: Semantic Triples, Which Are Actually Just Subject-Verb-Object
[00:26:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The Google tips for this, it’s any kind of writing that you are doing for Google. Simple phrases using semantic triples. Now, what I love about the word semantic triples is it sounds really geeky. But if you look on the right, it’s actually just subject-verb-object, and we all know how to do that. Google likes simple subject-verb-object. Jason Barnard is an author. Kalicube is a digital marketing agency. Jason Barnard works for Kalicube. It’s a subject, which is an entity, a thing, a verb, which is a relationship, to an object, which is another thing. So, Jason Barnard, thing, works for, relationship, object, Kalicube. So, it’s simple grammar.
[00:26:47] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And we don’t want to say Jason Barnard, the delightful guy in the red shirt, who comes from the UK but lives in Paris, works for the company from the south of France based in Aubais, Kalicube. Because we’ve separated the two, the subject, the object, and put the verb in the middle with lots of words that confuse not only Google, but to be honest, it’s confused me. And I can’t even remember if I said that phrase right. But human beings don’t want complicated phrases. We want to understand.
Context Clouds: Avoid Adding Words to Your Context Clouds That Are Going to Cause Confusion
[00:27:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): We also need to build context clouds. Now, we’ve got a cloud there with wave, beach, suncream, boat, picnic, sandcastle. If I just said to you the word wave, you wouldn’t know whether I meant wave as in goodbye, wave as in sound wave if we’re talking about radio, as you were, Tonya, or a wave on the sea, or a wave on the beach. And here we can see we’ve got sandcastle, we’ve got suncream, we’ve got boat, we’ve got picnic. That’s definitely on a beach. If we had wave alongside, just for example, oil rig and Titanic and iceberg, then it may well be a wave on the high seas. And if we had goodbye, mother, train, we would have wave as in goodbye.
[00:28:03] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, the context cloud is incredibly important. If you just write a very simple sentence that has no additional information, for example, Jason Barnard works for Kalicube, you’ve only got those two. But if you say Jason Barnard works for Kalicube and Kalicube is specialised in digital marketing and serves clients throughout the world, helping them with their Brand SERPs and Knowledge Panels, we have a context cloud, which is Brand SERPs, Knowledge Panels, clients. I should probably have added businesses in there, which immediately shows which Jason Barnard we’re talking about and which Kalicube we’re talking about.
[00:28:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Because there is a Jason Barnard, who is a podcaster, who has a music podcast, which I highly recommend, in the UK. In which case, if it said Jason Barnard podcast, music, the context cloud would clearly explain him. Whereas if it says Jason Barnard podcast, digital marketing, it clearly explains me. And all I’ve done is change one word to create that context cloud. And all of the content you build every time you write anything, think about semantic triples, subject-verb-object, and think about what context cloud you are creating. And try to avoid context clouds or adding words to your context clouds that are going to cause confusion.
Placement and Repetition/Consistency: Consistently Repeating and Putting Information in First, Second, and Third Party Sites
[00:29:11] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Next is placement. Where do you put this information? You need to put it on first, second, and third party sites. And that’s all those logos on the right. Just saying it yourself isn’t enough. You need the history teacher. You need grandma. You need the sister.
[00:29:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the repetition/consistency is that you need the teacher to say the same thing that you did. You need the sister to say the same thing that you did. If they contradict you or if they say it in a different way that is confusing for the child, the child will lose confidence. So, you need that repetition, but you need consistent repetition of the same information in the same understandable manner with those semantic triples and those context clouds across first, second, and third party websites.
The Importance of Mentioning the Area You Serve; Kalicube Is Based in France But They Serve Clients Globally
[00:29:58] Tonya Eberhart: I understood every bit of that. And yes, the word semantic triples did stump me for a minute but, man, I get it now. So, it would be like Brand Face helps coaches and consultants or in the context cloud, Brand Face, personal branding, branding, marketing, all of those kind of things. So, putting them all in the same context, I love it. I love it.
[00:30:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Yeah. And you would want to mention the area you serve. We were talking about local businesses earlier on, mentioning the area that you serve. For Kalicube, we’re based in Aubais in the south of France, but it’s worldwide. So, I want to be sure to mention worldwide, to mention my clients in Australia, my clients in America, my clients in the UK to make sure the Google sees that the context is worldwide. Global is the word I should use.
[00:30:49] Tonya Eberhart: Got it. I love it. And that may be missing from us. See, I’m learning stuff today too, guys, a whole lot of stuff. Okay. So, now we’ve talked about brand messaging and that, again, the language that tells people who you are, what you do, who you help, et cetera. Really in the simplistic terms, personal branding is about two things. It’s about brand messaging and brand imagery. How do people see your brand, how do they understand it, and then how do they see it?
Brand Imagery, Your Brand Colours, and Logos; Google Has an Aesthetic Taste in Terms of Images
[00:31:19] Tonya Eberhart: And so, let’s talk about brand imagery for a moment, beginning with your colours, your brand colours and your various logos. And here on the screen, you see a couple of different logos for us, our Brand Face standard logo. And then we have a podcast. We’ll talk about that in a moment. And you see those colours and logo versions on the screen. How does Google view logos?
[00:31:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. For logos and colours, in fact, Google actually has an aesthetic taste. I was talking to the lady who runs the Microsoft image search engine. And I actually asked her, does the algorithm have aesthetic taste? Does it choose pretty images? Because I get the feeling it does, because you can see here on the right hand side, the two images there were designed by my ex-wife. They have consistent colours. They’re very pretty. They’re very well balanced. She’s a great graphic designer.
[00:32:19] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And Google seemed to pick them up very, very quickly and show them dominant over the terrible images I’d made before. And the answer to the question is, do these algorithms have aesthetic taste in terms of images? The answer is yes. It will prioritise a pretty image or what it considers to be a pretty image over a nonpretty image.
Analysing Colours Through Mathematical Relationships Between Them So Anyone Can Design a Decent Image That Google Likes
[00:32:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Now, one thing that it can do is analyse colour. And there are mathematical relationships between colours. So, you can actually algorithmically calculate which colours go together. And there’s a colour wheel, which I would suggest you all look up with opposites. The opposites go together, and there’s a whole range of colours that go together and others that simply don’t fit.
[00:33:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, what I got my ex-wife to do was to give me a colour palette, which is the Kalicube idiot-proof colour palette. And as long as we use only the colours, exact colours, the exact hex references, the exact web references or RGB references, it always looks good because the colours always go well together. And we’ve got a pallet of about, I don’t know, about 40 colours. So, we’ve got lots of choice and lots of shades. And it’s brilliant, it’s wonderful. And as you can see, any idiot, including me, can now design a decent image that Google likes.
Google Tips for Brand Imagery: Be Simple, Use Colours That Go Together, Put Logo in the Filename, and Have Alt Tags
[00:33:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the Google tips are, and I didn’t add the be aesthetically pleasing, but for a logo at least, be simple, use colours that go together, that makes sense, that represent your company. For me, obviously, I use a lot of red for my own personal branding. And to get it to pick up on the logo, you need the correct filename. So, you would want to put logo in the filename. It’s as simple as that. Google uses that as a hint.
[00:34:03] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Alt tags are actually alternative tag, which is what the screen readers use, which is the text that you add so that the screen reader can read what the image is for blind people. So, your alt tag, it sounds very techy. But if you look in WordPress, it’s a field in the media library which says alt tag, and then you just put alternative text, I think it says. And you just put in Kalicube logo or maybe even Kalicube falcon logo, if I want to be specific about the fact that it’s a falcon, because it flies high and it’s powerful and it soars into the sky bringing glory to all those around it. And it’s very colourful.
Title Tags and Dominant Colours: Think a Lot Before You Release Logos Because Google Understands Dominant Colours
[00:34:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the title tag is also in WordPress, and that would also be the Kalicube logo. The dominant colour, Google loves dominant colours as you saw earlier on. My filter pills, if you remember, on my Brand SERP, if you search my name in America, Jason Barnard, it will give you the little filter pills at the top, the little menu items. They’re all red. Why? Because red is my dominant colour. Google goes for dominant colours. It understands dominant colours. So, you need to choose the correct dominant colour.
[00:35:09] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the Kalicube logo for that actually is not very good, because there isn’t one single dominant colour. We’ve made it too colourful. Unfortunately, we did that before I understood the concept of dominant colour, and now it’s too late to change. So, that’s a very good lesson for us all is think a lot before you release. Because once you’ve released it, it’s out there, it’s public, and it’s very, very difficult to roll back. And the last one, I’m going to say this on every single slide. Consistency across the web on first, second, and third party websites.
[00:35:40] Tonya Eberhart: Yeah. And if Michael was here, he would chime right in because consistency is his thing.
[00:35:46] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Oh, right. Okay. I’m sorry he’s not here.
Personal Photographs of Ourselves: Importance of Dominant Colours, Filenames, and Alt Tags
[00:35:49] Tonya Eberhart: I know. I know. Okay. So, now, and in terms of imagery and what your brand looks like, and if this, of course, is personal branding, so we have personal photographs of you that are out there in the cyber world. So, how does Google view our photographs of ourselves?
[00:36:10] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Yeah. As I was just saying with the filter pills, now you can see it, and I’ve forgotten that was the next slide. You can see that it’s picked up red. It will pick up what it feels is the dominant colour. And so, if you looked at John Lennon, it’s dark grey because a lot of the photos of him are in black and white. So, the dominant colour is actually grey. So, that’s the first thing to think about. One day, Google will create these filter pills, and you want to be sure that it’s the right colour. I chose red and I got it right, which is lovely.
[00:36:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But once again, the filename helps. If it’s a photo of me, it needs to have Jason-Barnard in it. Everything should be lowercase. You shouldn’t have spaces. You shouldn’t have special characters. If you’ve got my wife, Veronique, her second letter is e with an accent. You have to remove the accent. So, you simplify and explain in the filename, you don’t have spaces, you use hyphens, number one.
[00:37:06] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the filename should describe what is in the image. And so, basically, you repeat the filename in the alt tag, the alternative tag, because the alternative tag describes what’s in the image for blind people. And Google, to all intents and purposes, is blind.
Title Tag, Social Open Graph, and Featured Image: Place a Caption and Place the Important Images at the Top
[00:37:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The title tag, you’d want to say photo of Jason Barnard. I’ve put here the second one there, Jason Barnard at Pubcon, which helps to create my context cloud because I’m mentioning Pubcon, which is a famous digital marketing event. So, as you can see, I’m weaving the context cloud into every aspect of everything I do.
[00:37:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The social og, open graph, the featured image. In WordPress, you’ll have a featured image. If you’re using Yoast, you can set the social image. You want to make sure that you set the featured image and social image as being the one that you want Google to show, because that immediately indicates to Google that it’s an important image.
[00:38:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You can place a caption underneath, once again, underneath that photo. Jason Barnard speaking at Pubcon. That’s a semantic triple. And it’s a context cloud with Pubcon. And it gives the action of speaking, which indicates that I’m a conference speaker. So, once again, weaving it all in there. You need to place the images that are important at the top of the page. Google reads from top to bottom, top important, middle less important, bottom least important.
Google Analyses Copywriting Surrounding the Image to See the Context; The Content of the Image Needs to Be Recognisable
[00:38:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The copywriting surrounding the image. Google analyses the actual text around an image to see the context. We’re back to context again. If I have that image of me speaking at Pubcon, but around it, I’m speaking about swimming in the sea, waving at my mother as she leaves on a train, that would be incredibly confusing. What we want is Jason Barnard gave a great talk at Pubcon in 2019, speaking about Knowledge Panels and Brand SERPs. And that’s giving that immense contact, not only to the image, but adding to my own brand messaging.
[00:38:56] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Then the content of the image, especially for people, needs to be recognisable. Google analyses every single image it finds. I didn’t believe it, but Meenaz Merchant, who’s the guy from Microsoft Bing. I said, you can’t analyse them all. He said, yes we do. So, you need to make sure that your face is recognisable, if it’s a photo of yourself or your team’s faces, if it’s a photo of the team or a building. It needs to be recognised. You can’t have images that have weird angles. Google isn’t that smart yet. If understanding what the image contains requires any imagination from you as a human being, Google probably won’t get it.
Changing the Background Colour of the Same Image Can Make Google See It as Two Different Groups
[00:39:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Once again, dominant colour and the consistency across the web. And the reason I’ve written in groups is because in order to choose those images for my Knowledge Panel, the ones that it shows most often for me has grouped them. And it chooses one image from each dominant group.
[00:39:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And because I use the same image all the time, which is that one on the left, I just change the background to blue, and it sees those as two different groups. And each one is representative of the group, even though the actual photo itself is the same. So, it’s showing my whole chest, and the blue in the background makes it a different group and each one dominates. Excuse me, I interrupted.
Orange Will Be the Dominant Colour of Brand Face as Long as They Are Consistent With Using It
[00:40:18] Tonya Eberhart: Oh, no, you’re fine. So, this orange wall that we painted not long ago behind us, we try to have the colour orange in every video or photo that we have done, which is either I’m wearing orange or we have an orange wall or there’s something orange somewhere. And that’s what you mean by content of the image, maybe, a little bit.
[00:40:40] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. The orange will be the dominant colour.
[00:40:42] Tonya Eberhart: Okay.
[00:40:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): What Google will do is associate the colour orange with you and your company. And as long as you want that to happen, then that’s absolutely fine. I wear the red shirt because that means I don’t have to worry about the background.
[00:40:55] Tonya Eberhart: Right.
[00:40:55] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You don’t need it to dominate every image. It doesn’t have to be every. That image on the right is too red, but you do need it to always be present. So, you need to choose that one colour that will represent you, and you really need to make sure that you are consistent across the web with that colour.
Social Media: Stick to Your Social Media Platforms But You Need to Be Able to Manage Them
[00:41:13] Tonya Eberhart: Perfect. All right. Now we move into social media. This is, again, one of the branding elements that we create for our clients as they go through the personal branding program and the social media cover photos. We create consistency among those, of course. And let’s talk about, Jason, how does Google see those social media cover photos and the consistency across the board?
[00:41:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Google actually doesn’t pay much attention to the cover photos. It pays attention to the content. The cover photos, we’ve actually redone all of ours recently because I realised that it was inconsistent. So, that’s much more of a user problem, i.e. people didn’t understand that when they were on Twitter and they moved to Facebook, that it was still the same company. We were inconsistent.
[00:42:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And thanks to Mary-Ann and Joan who worked on that, and they created a consistent image across all our social platforms. So, from a user perspective, I can’t express enough how important that is. From Google’s perspective, we’re looking at how many social media platforms we need to manage. And at Kalicube, what we do is recommend that you stick to those maybe two, maybe three, potentially four, but you really need to manage them and be able to manage them.
The Importance of Identifying the Dominant Social Platform Based on Your Industry and Demonstrating Engagement
[00:42:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And Twitter and YouTube particularly are very powerful, but it depends on your industry. And Kalicube Pro, which is the SaaS platform we’ve built, basically identifies in an industry which is the dominant social platform or platforms, and that allows you to focus. For example, B2B, it would be LinkedIn. Real estate is probably going to be Facebook. Twitter is not going to be great for real estate because there isn’t that ongoing engagement, but it would be great for, it’s great for digital marketing, let’s say.
[00:43:12] Tonya Eberhart: Or event.
[00:43:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Pardon me.
[00:43:14] Tonya Eberhart: Or events maybe.
[00:43:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yep. Events as well, especially if you’ve got the opportunity to have live tweets going on. And demonstrating engagement is incredibly important. There’s always been a big debate in the search engine optimisation industry about whether social media has an effect on Google rankings. And in this context, we don’t care. Because through social media, we can demonstrate to Google a) which images to use, b) what our brand message is, but particularly, c) who is our real audience, which audience is engaging with us. Google can see that.
Google Understands Correctly If Your Social Media Platform Turns up on the First Page of Search
[00:43:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, what it’s doing is understanding who engages with us on what platform. And the way to spot whether Google’s understanding correctly what you are doing is to see if that social media platform turns up on the first page of Google when somebody searches your brand name. If you are investing a lot into Twitter but Twitter doesn’t appear, you’re investing badly. Google doesn’t see that engagement.
[00:44:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Same with YouTube. If you’re investing on video and pushing a lot of stuff out on YouTube but YouTube doesn’t rank, doesn’t come up number on page one for your branded name on Google, then Google hasn’t understood that your audience are engaging or you’re on the wrong platform.
[00:44:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, this is a really simple way for you to understand, am I investing in the right platform and am I investing in getting the right people to engage? Google understands so much about all of us. It dominates the search industry. 90% of searches are on Google. So, you can bet your bottom dollar that Google is getting it right and you are getting it wrong.
[00:44:59] Tonya Eberhart: Oh, I love that because the numbers don’t lie, right?
[00:45:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. Google’s trying to represent you to your audience in a way that makes sense to your audience. So if it’s not showing YouTube, then it doesn’t think YouTube is relevant to your audience. And once again, either it isn’t relevant to that audience and you’re investing on the wrong platform or Google hasn’t seen that they’re engaging with you so it isn’t placing it on the front page. In which case, you’re wasting your time for the moment, and you need to change your strategy.
It’s Basically Free Market Research to Search Your Name on Google and Look at Your Brand SERP
[00:45:27] Tonya Eberhart: Makes perfect sense. Okay.
[00:45:29] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Google is basically, if you search your brand name on Google, it’s basically free market research. You don’t need to pay a massive company to do the market research. You look at your Brand SERP, what appears when your audience googles your brand name. And Google will tell you what’s right, tell you what’s wrong, show you where your brand message isn’t coming across, show you where you’re not being consistent with your colours. Everything we’ve talked about up till now is clearly visible when you search your own name.
[00:45:58] Tonya Eberhart: I never thought about it that way.
[00:46:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I did. I’ve been thinking about it like that for years.
[00:46:04] Tonya Eberhart: Yeah. And it costs a lot to get people to do this research study, right?
[00:46:11] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah.
[00:46:12] Tonya Eberhart: And all you have to do is just type in your brand in Google.
[00:46:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. It’s just so idiotically simple when you say it like that, doesn’t it?
[00:46:21] Tonya Eberhart: No, doesn’t it?
[00:46:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): That’s lovely.
Google Is Trying to Get Into the Podcasting Space, Where Spotify and Apple Already Dominate
[00:46:24] Tonya Eberhart: Okay. So, now we come to the properties that Brand Face is a part of. So, we have a podcast. Many of you on here today probably have your own podcast. I know a lot of the coaches and consultants that we work with do have a podcast. Ours is called Be BOLD Branding. How does Google view any properties like that that would be a direct part of the brand?
[00:46:52] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Yeah. I’m using podcast as an example because it’s an interesting case. Google is trying to get into the podcasting space. It really missed the boat years ago, and Apple really truly dominates. Spotify has picked up a great deal, and Google are now trying to catch up.
[00:47:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, you can see there my podcast, With Jason Barnard… It’s got the information box on the right hand side. Google rolled that out last October, trying to get more information about podcasts into the search results. You’ve got the podcast boxes, so you can listen to the latest episodes. And from that perspective, oh, sorry, and at the bottom, you’ve got, if I just search for branding podcasts, it shows me a whole list. Obviously, I want to be there or I won’t have that presence.
Google Tips for Podcasts: Have a Dedicated Site for Each Entity and Add Transcripts for Podcasts and Videos
[00:47:35] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the Google tips for these properties, whether it’s an event series, we have Kalicube Tuesdays, which is another different thing, entity, and the With Jason Barnard… podcast and myself and Kalicube the company and Kalicube Pro the SaaS platform, each has a dedicated site. And that helps Google to differentiate between the podcast, With Jason Barnard… and the person, Jason Barnard.
[00:48:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the reason I named the podcast With Jason Barnard… is because I knew it was ambiguous. And I wanted to see if I could make sure that Google understood that it’s two different things and that With Jason Barnard… wasn’t a reference to me but a reference to the podcast. And I managed it. And part of that was using a dedicated website to say, this is Jason Barnard on jasonbarnard.com, withjasonbarnard.com represents the podcast.
[00:48:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Transcripts for podcasts and videos, incredibly important. Google can analyse them and it can understand them. But when you look at the auto-generated subtitles, often it gets it wrong. Also, if you add the transcript, Google can compare what it thought it was to what you say it is. And you are saying explicitly to Google this is the understanding of this text.
In Terms of Podcast Episodes, Google Picks Them in Order; In Terms of What’s at the Top, It’s All About Optimising
[00:48:50] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And there’s a question. Is there a way to change what Google picks first? In terms of the podcast episodes, it’s always going to be in order. And in terms of what goes at the top, it’s all about optimising the page to make sure that Google understands that that page represents this podcast.
Lots of Tiny Details Add up for Google to Understand That the Web Page Represents the Podcast
[00:49:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, once again, semantic triples, context clouds, making the page clear, putting the images near the top as possible, adding the alt tags, the title tags, using the filename correctly. It’s lots of tiny details that all add up to Google understanding that that web page, withjasonbarnard.com, represents that podcast, With Jason Barnard….
Create a Thumbnail, Put a Consistent Publishing Schedule, and Always Stick on Topic
[00:49:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I would advise you to create a thumbnail for every episode. Most platforms don’t use them yet, but that’s definitely going to happen because Google won’t allow that boring triple there of the three times the same image to last. The reason it doesn’t show them today is because most podcasts don’t do that. As soon as most podcasts do do that, it will show them. And then if you’re not doing it, you’ll look foolish.
[00:49:55] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You want to put a consistent publishing schedule. Google is like the child. It waits for you to publish. It expects an episode from me every week. And when I don’t, it’s disappointed. Think about how you’re disappointing that child when you’re not consistent.
[00:50:10] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And always stick on topic. Don’t try to talk about things you don’t know about. Don’t try to communicate on things you don’t know about. Not only because you are not going to be helping your audience, but also because you’re going to confuse Google. Google understands or wants to understand what is your specialist topic, where are you expert, where are you authoritative, where can it trust you to serve its users and help them to the solution to their problem as efficiently as it possibly can.
Don’t Always Talk About the Same Thing But Still Remember Your Dominant Topic
[00:50:44] Tonya Eberhart: That’s hard sometimes to always stay on topic when you’re interviewing people who are not always, who don’t do what you do, right? But I think we’ve learned to just inject. Okay. What that means in terms of personal branding is how did that affect your personal brand? Here’s what we teach in personal branding, and plug those things in as we’re interviewing somebody, because really we only interview people about their personal brand. Tell us your story and how you started your business and why and who you help. So, as long as we stick to those things, we should be okay on the topic, right?
[00:51:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s a really, really good point that you make is that whatever anybody else says, you can actually just say afterwards what it is you want to do to bring it back into the topicality. And I don’t mean always talk about the same thing.
[00:51:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I do some podcast interviews, which is specifically about my private life, the music group, the blue dog and the yellow koala. And I enjoy that, but I put those on my own personal site with transcripts. And then when I talk about digital marketing, it goes on thebrandserpguy.com, which is my red shirt, professional website. And so, I separate it that way.
Make Sure That the Context in Which You Are Publishing Corresponds to the Context of What You Are Talking About
[00:51:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, whichever the dominant topic is decides which site it will go on. And it’s dominant topic. It doesn’t mean to say that I cannot talk about the blue dog whilst I’m talking about digital marketing nor that I can’t talk about digital marketing when I’m talking about the punk folk music.
[00:52:17] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, it doesn’t mean be boring and always say the same thing. It means make sure that the context in which you are publishing corresponds to the context of what it is you’re talking about. So, my personal life is my website, and my professional persona of The Brand SERP Guy in the red shirt is on thebrandserpguy.com. And that has to be very distinct.
[00:52:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And it’s surprisingly difficult for human beings to keep that consistency and to make those decisions, but you have to. Don’t let Google decide. Google is not your mother, allowing you to go to this party dressed up in the world’s worst most embarrassing outfit, where you look a total fool to your friends.
The Question of Maintaining Two Social Media Profiles, One for Personal Use and Another One for Professional Use
[00:53:00] Tonya Eberhart: That puts it in perspective. Okay. So, I’m going to say something to Nate Dania. Are you still on here? And if you are, just hit us up with a comment. But Nate is our client and he’s from Dubai. And he just actually sent me this question yesterday. And the question was, I have a personal Instagram channel and I have a professional one for his, he’s a real estate broker and investor. So, he says, with my limited time in trying to post on both of those, should I just narrow it to one or should I keep those two separated somehow? Can you help me answer that, Jason? Because that’s a great question for you.
[00:53:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, it’s a really, really, really good question. If you’ve already got the social media profiles open, then there’s no point in closing them down. What you should do is make sure that the personal profile links to your personal website, and your personal website links to your personal profile, and your business profile links to your business website, and your business website links to your personal profile, which brings me to the point that every single individual person should have a personal website.
[00:54:11] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): If you don’t, then you don’t have any means in which to communicate with Google from that, what I was talking about earlier on, the Entity Home idea. Google wants to find that place on the web that you own, that represents you. So, from that perspective, you would want to create a one page. One page website is fine. Jasonbarnard.com could be a one page website. I created a one page website for Anton Shulke. It ranks number one. We’ve linked it to his social accounts. That’s pulled his social accounts up.
Your Personal and Professional Social Profiles Should Engage a Personal and Business Audience Respectively, But There Is a Possibility of a Crossover
[00:54:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, the idea is to say your personal life and your professional life should be two separate websites. And you can run both social profiles, but you would want to engage a personal audience on your personal profile and the business audience on your business one. And the two, of course, can intersect. You can share your business stuff on your personal social profile. I would suggest it’s probably less relevant to share your personal stuff on your professional one.
[00:55:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But definitely from a business perspective, you would want to focus on your business profiles. Unless, as you said earlier on, you represent your business. You were talking about the superstars walking around your local town, who represent their business in their ads. You would need to find the time to do both because you represent your business. So, you need them both, and they feed off each other.
[00:55:37] Tonya Eberhart: So, there you go, Nate. I think you have your answer now. You need them both.
[00:55:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. He’s saying that the same audience, but in fact, the audience wouldn’t be the same, because people are interested in your private life. Your mother, who might be interacting with you on Instagram, wouldn’t be looking at your business website. So, there will be a crossover. There’s a Venn diagram with probably a massive crossover in your case, Nate. But certainly, some people will be in your personal space who won’t be in your professional space and vice versa.
[00:56:07] Tonya Eberhart: Okay. Got it. I think that makes perfect sense. All right.
Google Needs to See Your Social Profiles Which You Can Put as Small Icons on Your Website, Also Called the Hub
[00:56:12] Tonya Eberhart: All right. So, now this is a great segue into the website. Okay. So, the website, show us a breakdown because I think we use the same language here. We’ve always called it the hub. It’s like, and we always say, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, Jason. A lot of people say, okay, when you get to your website, you want to show all your social media icons and make sure that people know how to connect with you. And there’s no question that that connection is important to Google, right?
[00:56:42] Tonya Eberhart: In terms of what we think about it, it’s like once you get them to your website, why would you want to send them back out to social media to see all of your competitors? Why not just keep them right here on your website so that they can deal with you and only you? Now I know those are competing statements, so to speak, because you want Google to see you and connect there. But in my opinion, you don’t want that to be the very first thing they see. And you can just tear that to shreds if you want. Go for it.
[00:57:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): No, not at all. Google does need to see which are your social profiles. That’s incredibly important. You can put it in the footers, small icons. If you look at kalicube.com or jasonbarnard.com, that’s exactly what we do. And we certainly don’t push people towards Facebook and social media platforms. I never understood adverts, where you see in the street, where they say, join us on Facebook. Why on earth would you pay good money for a massive advert in the middle of a town to send people to Facebook?
[00:57:42] Tonya Eberhart: Yes.
Your Hub Is Ultimately Where You Want to Send Everybody; Get Them to the Website When They’re Ready to Read Your Message in Detail
[00:57:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Send them to something you own, which is your hub, which is your website. And that website is ultimately where you want everybody to come. And it’s important to remember that there are a couple of things here. Number one is they don’t have to come to your website straight away. So, you don’t need to link to your website from every single social media post. You can bring them to your website after, let’s say, seven touches, the magic seven touches we talk about for converting. It doesn’t matter.
[00:58:09] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Get them to the website when they’re ready, when they’re ready to read your message in detail. Because those soundbites you were talking about earlier on, they definitely need to be out there, but the whole chunky story needs to be on your website. That’s where you’re going to capture the imagination of your audience and bring them on board truly.
Your Website Needs to Have a Balanced View of Who You Are, What You Do, Who Your Audience Is, and Your Offers and Products
[00:58:29] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And from Google’s perspective, your website needs to have dedicated pages for your offers, for your company, to represent your company at the top. And your Brand SERP, the results page on Google for a search on your brand name, needs to represent equitably a balanced overview of who you are, what you do, and who your audience is and represent your products.
[00:58:55] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): We’ve got online courses. We’ve got a SaaS platform. It needs to represent our visual identity that I described, that Veronique created for us earlier on. And it needs to represent your social voice through here, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter. That is a balanced view of my company from the audience of that company with whom I’ve already engaged, who know who I am by definition, because they wouldn’t be searching the name Kalicube if they didn’t know who we were.
[00:59:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, what I’m looking to do here is say, this is a representation of our company. And I said earlier, Google is your business card. Here, potentially you could argue Google is your homepage.
What Is a SaaS Platform, What Does It Do, and What Other Services Kalicube Offers?
[00:59:35] Tonya Eberhart: Ah, love it. Can you tell us what the SaaS platform means?
[00:59:40] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Oh, software as a service, sorry, yes. The thing is I’ve been optimising Brand SERPs for so long and I was doing it manually. And then one day, I sat down and I thought, I’m sure I don’t need to do this manually. And I developed the SaaS, the software as a service platform. And what it does is it collects data from Google, analyses it, and then presents to you exactly what Google sees, and then explains to you how you can change Google’s perspective and understanding of you. So, basically, I built a platform to automate what I was doing by hand.
[01:00:18] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And what I found interesting is the day that I started actually working with it, my work got at least 7 or 8 times better. Because as a human being, you can’t keep all this information in your head. And when I built the algorithm, the algorithm doesn’t make mistakes. It doesn’t forget stuff.
[01:00:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And now we do a done-for-you service, whereby we use the software as a service platform ourselves to serve our clients. And it means that we can serve them in a way that is truly helpful and truly efficient. And basically, we pump the brand into our machine, and then the machine spits back all the things that need to be updated, changed, and corrected.
Decide on the Brand Message, Logo, Visuals, and Different Platforms to Work With Before Educating Google
[01:01:01] Tonya Eberhart: Ah, okay. And I want to take just a moment to say where it all begins, guys, because you have to have the brand built before you plug it into the machine, right? And you don’t want to just start throwing things that we call that spray and pray, right? You just throw a bunch of things out there and pray somebody will click on your link or call you. But you want to have that really dialed in first because it’s going to give you the pathway, the blueprint, the map to get to where you want to be or how you want Google to view you.
[01:01:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, exactly. And as you say, there is no point in going out and correcting all the information around the web if you’re only going to then redo it six months later. You need to get that brand message, the logo, the visuals, the different platforms that you’re going to be working on decided before you start to educate Google. Because if you educate Google about one thing and then change your mind in six months, the child is going to be very confused. Make your decisions, get it right, get it straight in your own mind, then educate the child.
The Power of YouTube’s Real-Time and Direct Feed Into Google
[01:02:10] Tonya Eberhart: Love it. Okay. And this just shows another of our properties, of course, our YouTube channel and shows some of the consistency there. But of course, as we know, Google owns YouTube.
[01:02:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. And YouTube and Twitter, in fact, feed directly into Google. So, basically, anything you push into Twitter or YouTube, Google will digest natively. It will see everything. It doesn’t necessarily see everything on Facebook or Instagram because it doesn’t have a feed from them. It doesn’t own them. It doesn’t own Twitter, but Twitter provides a feed to Google of all the tweets. So, these are the platforms that you can really start to educate the child. And you should be thinking about how is the child going to perceive this, at least partially, in what you’re doing.
[01:02:55] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Oh, and it can be real time. As you can see, 17 minutes from the time I posted a video to YouTube to the moment it appeared on the SERP, on the search engine results page. So, these are very powerful, real time communications that you can have through YouTube and Twitter with your audience through the lens of Google as it were.
Google Tips for YouTube: Make Great Thumbnails, Think About the Title, Create a Great Description, and Have Engagement
[01:03:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the Google tips for YouTube are make great thumbnails. We do that. We really work hard on those, the great colours, the design. I get Veronique to do templates for each and every type of video. And then we just templated out with the same colours.
[01:03:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Think about the title. Make sure you mention your brand when it’s about your brand. Make sure you mention the topic. You want to make a great description using semantic triples, context clouds, as we talked earlier on. You want consistent topicality, as far as possible, on a specific channel. You want consistency in your posting. You want engagements. Google pays a great deal of attention to engagements. And percentage of watch time is incredibly important in the YouTube algorithm, and that potentially feeds into Google as well.
[01:04:04] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Incredibly important is the idea of engagement. If you’re not making engagement content, there’s no reason for Google to show it to your audience or for that matter on YouTube. So, basically, when you’re winning on YouTube, you’re also winning on Google with its presentation of what you’re putting onto YouTube. So, it’s a double win every time.
More Tips: Add Subtitles or Closed Captions and Use Chapters to Get the Key Moments
[01:04:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then there’s a second slide on here, which is a really handy hint just afterwards, which is to add the subtitles, the closed captions. Once again, YouTube will do an automatic caption. But if you add them manually, it knows that you’ve added them manually, and you’re explicitly telling it what’s being said. And that’s incredibly helpful for, once again, confidence and understanding, as opposed to simple understanding.
[01:04:53] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then use chapters to get the key moments. Those appear in the Google search results, the little blue thing, 17 key moments. And that’s simply putting a timing in the description of YouTube, starting at 0:00 and different chapters, key moments. Google will pick them up and it will put them in the SERPs, which gives you more space and potentially more visibility in Google search results with your videos.
[01:05:21] Tonya Eberhart: I learned a lot there. We’re not doing all of those things right now, but we will be .
[01:05:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. We do it probably too much, but I’m very, very, very, very keen. The word consistency is here. Once we start doing those key moments, the chapters, once we start doing the chapters, once we start doing the transcripts, we keep doing them because Google the child learns to expect them. And the more you please the child, the more you support the child, the more the child will be able to help you reach your audience with your brand message the way you meant it.
Having a Consistent Username Is Also Helpful; As Long as You Link Your Social Profiles to Your Hub, Google Will Understand
[01:06:00] Tonya Eberhart: Exactly. And this is just a snippet of the consistency that we try our very best to show across all of our social platforms. And I’m assuming that when you can get that same username everywhere, @brandfacestar, you should get that same username everywhere. That makes a big difference for Google.
[01:06:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Not a huge difference, but definitely, definitely very helpful. If you can’t, then it’s not a terrible, terrible, terrible problem you can’t overcome. For example, we couldn’t get Kalicube on Twitter. We had to get Kalicube Pro. Google still understands, and it’s still perfectly happy. The key for it understanding which are your social media profiles is the linking from the hub, which is your own website. So, yes, if you can, because it’s good for you users, it’s good for Google, it’s good for you, it’s easy to remember. And if you can’t, it’s not the end of the world.
Consistency Across the Entire Web Is Important; Always Use Your Website as Reference
[01:07:04] Tonya Eberhart: Got it. Okay. And then in terms of consistency in how Google sees things, what’s your big takeaway?
[01:07:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. Consistency across the entire web with all your communication, from images to text, to videos, to thumbnails, to topicality. And use your website as the hub. The website is always the reference. It’s always the place that once Google has understood that that is the website that represents you or your company. Here we’ve got Kalicube on the left and we’ve got me on the right hand side. The website ranks number one. Google understands that that website represents Kalicube. For me, jasonbarnard.com ranks number one. It understands that that website represents me.
[01:07:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And then once you’ve got that, you can start using your Brand SERP, the search engine results page for your brand name, to see how well you are doing. Google is reflecting in your Brand SERP what it thinks is useful, helpful, and valuable to your audience. And if you disagree with Google, that means that either you’re not communicating properly with Google about what it is you are doing and what it is you have to offer, or you are investing in totally the wrong places, or you’re not getting engagement from your audience that indicates that this is important.
To Get Ahold of Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy), Just Search His Name and Choose the Way You Want to Engage With Him
[01:08:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And what a lot of people say at the end of this presentation is how do we get hold of you, Jason? How do we reach out and start talking to you? And the answer is actually to search my name, Jason Barnard. Because that great Google business card, what it should do is allow you, the audience, my audience to choose how you interact with me.
[01:08:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And if we take Kalicube as a company, you can come to kalicube.com, which ranks number one, do business with us. Go to Kalicube Pro if you’re interested in the SaaS platform. Join us on Twitter. We’ve got our Twitter boxes. Join us on YouTube. We’ve got the YouTube videos that rank. It gives you, the audience the choice of how you want to engage with us.
[01:09:10] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that is a great Google business card and a great reflection that not only have we got a wonderful digital marketing strategy that functions and that Google understands, but also that we’ve mastered our brand. And we’ve managed to communicate that brand to Google, so Google can communicate that brand in the way we wanted to our audience across all of Google’s different searches from our Brand SERP to product searches to generic searches.
[01:09:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And it’s astonishing if you imagine how big Google is and how many opportunities there are to appear on Google. If you can appear on Google and your brand message is there and your colours are there and your logo is there, your audience are getting a great piece of visibility of who you are. And every time they see you, it’s a tiny signal that will add up and add up and add up and add up and add up. And you end up being the reference for them in your field.
Contact Brand Face Through Their Email Address and Sign up to the Kalicube Newsletter Through Jason’s Different Sites
[01:10:07] Tonya Eberhart: I love it. Jason, I can’t thank you enough for coming here with us today and helping straighten all this stuff out. I have some good news for those of you in the real estate genre. Okay. So, today, we’ve been talking about personal branding for anyone, right? For anyone, no matter what your industry is, and how to get Google to view you the way you want to be viewed.
[01:10:31] Tonya Eberhart: Now, real estate, it can be a little bit different because it’s hyperlocal. And I’ll let Jason address that here in just a moment. But we want to do another presentation, a part two for those of you specifically in real estate. So, if you would like to chime in and you would like to be notified as soon as we get that ready to roll, which should hopefully not be too long. Okay. Do me a favour, Lesli. Can you pop in the [email protected] email address? Let anybody who wants to be notified of that, just email us. And in the subject line, just put Google. Okay.
[01:11:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Another possibility would be to sign up to the Kalicube newsletter. Go to any kalicube.com, kalicube.pro, Kalicube Academy, Kalicube Tuesdays, With Jason Barnard… on my own site. Click on the newsletter, sign up, because we ping out these different events to our audience who are on our newsletter list. And you will definitely get informed when we’re doing this next webinar.
Google Sees Real Estate Differently Because It Is Hyperlocal
[01:11:42] Tonya Eberhart: Awesome. Will you take just a second and explain to them just why Google sees real estate differently? And that will be the setup for our next one, which Michael will be able to be on, by the way. And that’s his thing. He is a real estate broker and investor. He is The Abundant Life Broker. That’s how hopefully Google will see him, right? And just talk a little bit about that.
[01:12:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. Real estate is, as you said, hyperlocal. Google doesn’t want to show a real estate agent from Florida when somebody’s searching in New York. So, Google’s understanding of, once again, who is your audience, what’s the georegion, what kind of customer or client are you looking for, are you high-end, are you more of a student, a low-end real estate agent, is it the big mansions or the small flats, are you serving a specific town or a specific state, do you have different offices in different towns within the state.
[01:12:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): All of those things need to be dealt with, so that Google is sure that it can show the correct information for the person searching on Google. And if you’ve got multiple offices, that’s a massive Google My Business problem, where you need to make sure that each of the offices serves a particular area.
[01:13:03] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I saw Andy Simpson was here earlier on. He’s an SEO who’s incredibly, incredibly knowledgeable about local SEO. So, I’ll definitely, once we start setting this up, be asking him for some extra hints because local SEO is an entire universe. I know a lot about it. Andy knows more. So, I’ll get some tips and tricks from him. Andy Simpson, who is absolutely awesome and a great guy as well.
Few Reminders to Contact Kalicube and Brand Face; Thanking Each Other for the Time and Effort for This Show
[01:13:28] Tonya Eberhart: Oh, fantastic. We look forward to that. And if you, guys, again will just email us or sign up for the Kalicube newsletter, do both actually, right? Sign up for the Kalicube newsletter and then email us at [email protected] with the word Google in the subject line, and we’ll make sure to put you on a list so you can get notified when we do the part two presentation specifically for hyperlocal real estate.
[01:13:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Brilliant.
[01:13:57] Tonya Eberhart: So, I want to close out with this. Again, google Jason Barnard. And if you would like to make sure that your brand is built correctly before you bring it to Jason, so he has something nice and beautiful to work with. If you want to jump to the front of the line and just schedule a call with us to see what that takes, go to discussyourbrand.com. And hopefully, when you google us, Brand Face, you’ll see what you should be seeing, which is personal branding experts.
[01:14:28] Tonya Eberhart: So, Jason, again, thank you so very much for all of your time and all of the effort that you put into this. I’ve learned so much myself today and I appreciate it.
[01:14:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yep. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you for a delightful presentation. I would like to point out to everybody that the initial presentation that I did, Tonya sent me a message saying, actually, can we make it more practical? And she was a hundred percent right. And I’m very thankful to you, Tonya, for making me better at my own job of presenting what it is I know about Google and how to get your brand message out through Google.
Thanking All the People and Staff Who Work Behind the Scenes to Make the Presentation Possible
[01:15:00] Tonya Eberhart: Well, thank you. You had us scrambling to making sure we had some consistency across the board. And I would like to give a big thank you to Lesli and Febe from our Brand Face team. Lesli put together this presentation today, absolutely stunning and beautiful. Lesli, you are amazing. Febe has done a lot of work behind the scenes to get the Eventbrite set up, to get the emails sent out to let everybody know that things were going on today. So, appreciate you, guys. And Joan on your end.
[01:15:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah.
[01:15:29] Tonya Eberhart: Thank you, Joan, for all of your work as well, because it it takes a team guys. It really takes a team.
[01:15:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It does. Yeah. Joan, Mary-Ann, Katrina are all working very hard behind the scenes at Kalicube, absolutely amazing team. I’m so happy with them. And I see that Joan was here today, posting and helping with all of that, absolutely brilliant. And Lesli, thank you, Lesli, from Brand Face for sorting out my slides. And Mary-Ann is now going to have to do that for future slides. Bad luck, Mary-Ann. You’ve got a new job.
[01:16:03] Tonya Eberhart: I’m sure she’s grateful. All right.
[01:16:06] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): No, she loves it. And what’s delightful is finding skills in people that we didn’t know necessarily they had. And Mary-Ann’s doing a great job with the design stuff so I’m happy.
[01:16:17] Tonya Eberhart: Awesome. After this, if you have any other questions you want to post some down below in the comments on whatever platform you’re on, we will come back and answer those questions for you. So, all right, we’re over and out. And again, thank you so much. Google us, Brand Face and Jason Barnard. All right. Thanks, guys, and thank you, Jason.
[01:16:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Thanks a lot. Bye bye.
[01:16:39] Tonya Eberhart: Bye bye.
